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The war hadn't been good to her. Not that it'd been good to anyone, of course. And not that she'd been one of those who had lost the most. No, she'd been, by all accounts, one of the lucky ones - no one in her small family had died, or come close to dying. Her older brother, Rodrick, had never been disturbed from the family's jewelry business operations. To see him in the shop, his hands steady and his stigmatism keeping casual observers away from distracting him, you'd never know that there had been a war.
Her mother was also unaffected, relatively speaking. Marguerite Bulstrode had scarcely moved from her delicate china-plagued parlor the entire duration of the war, her fragile and bittersweet widow's smile barely hinting at the sorrow their world had endured.
But Millicent, she felt like she had lost something with this war. She wasn't entirely sure was so much she could have lost, she realized. She could have died in that final battle, where she never veered from poor foolish Pansy Parkinson's side. She could have lost a limb, which Marguerite would have found infinitely worse. She didn't even lose a button, which was a chronic problem for Millicent, with her too-ample bosom raging against her tidy school button-downs until she started wearing men's clothing, which was strangely more accommodating.
It wasn't even the fact that ultimately, not only had they lost the battle, they'd lost the war. Millicent was as conservative as the rest of them, but only vaguely interested in politics. She would have been content to share a quiet animosity with the Muggleborns for perpetuity. Which was ultimately what the purebloods were getting now, she realized. The Mudblood lovers had won, but there was no requirement that any of the people in favor of Pureblood supremacy cede their views. They were merely required to accommodate where they'd prefer not to. Millicent certainly didn't feel like the right to refuse service to Muggleborns was worth fighting for, but she never said so, because everyone else was interested in fighting to the death over it, and who was she to contradict those whose power was so much greater than hers?
Still, she felt like she had experienced a devastating loss the day of the final battle. And ever since the day she'd returned home from Hogwarts, bloody and exhausted, she'd felt like she was a bit stuck.
Her mother pressed her into service for the summer while the Wizengamot decided what to do with the children who'd been Death Eaters. Millicent was among that number, having nearly completed her seventh year before the Battle of Hogwarts disrupted everything. Would they return to school to complete their exams?
Marguerite was adamant that Millicent do so, given that Millicent had failed to acquire a suitable husband in the six-and-change years she'd already been at school, and would for the meantime have to practice some sort of trade, which necessitated finishing her exams.
Millicent herself wasn't particularly worried about her future. She'd always been fond of reading, and had no particular ambitions aside from continuing to read as much and as frequently as possible. Moreover, Professor Snape had told her that she possessed passable proficiency at potions, and would recommend her as an apprentice, if she so desired, to one of the major manufacturers in Diagon Alley, where she could continue on her training and eventually become a Potions Master, if she so desired.
Millicent was satisfied with this opportunity. She liked potions, for not the least of reasons that she had a major crush on her potions-master-come-headmaster, Severus Snape. As he'd written on many of her papers, she was "competent" at it, though she was "unoriginal."
She didn't mind unoriginal, and the idea that he thought her competent made her soar. Not many people thought she was competent at anything other than being a hulking, fearsome creature standing in the corner, looming over scared first-year Hufflepuffs. Much less did people associate her to have skills at anything as delicate and fragile as potions.
He was, to date, the only crush she'd ever had on a man. Which made the prospect of marrying a man - her mother's age-old expectation - fairly difficult for her to swallow. Her secret love of the female form had long eclipsed this interest in her professor, however.
She'd long held this crush up as a shield - he was a respectable man for any young Slytherin lady to fancy. People at school stopped asking questions about which classmates she was interested in because, over the years, she always answered 'Snape.' They read her as more than a bit ambitious, given their disparity of social roles and her perceptively-grotesque outward appearance (she was fat). However, given that Snape, while a halfblood, was talented and eminently ambitious, he was a perfectly appropriate for any lady's undying infatuation. Indeed, given her absence of other male-centered crushes amongst their peers, it would have been stranger for her to not crush on Severus Snape. But from her standpoint, he was also a safe choice because he was so remarkably unattainable and indecipherable. People gave up trying to figure out what she liked in men. Which was a blessing, because for the most part, she didn't like anything about them.
Instead, over the years, her eyes lingered on various faces that would have been far more dangerous to acknowledge.
For first and second years, Millicent fantasized about Gertrude Jones of Ravenclaw, which house joined them during herbology. Gertrude's hair was always in her face, and her short stature was such that her overdeveloped breasts rested on the too-high worktable as she and Millicent wrestled roots together. Then Gertrude lost her puppy fat, and started going out with the man she'd later marry, the blandly handsome Thenadius Dire, and Millicent never forgave the girl these faults.
For her third year, Millicent hid herself in her books, and became obsessed with fantasies of Irma Pince. The woman was like her, in many ways, she thought (or, more accurately, hoped). A deep-seated scorn for real life, a sense of intentionality in how they approached the stacks, and a disgust towards men. Irma could get away with it better, of course - no one expected a librarian to marry.
Then Millicent's futile fantasies were dashed when she realized Minerva McGonagall's studious attentions to reading were not limited to contents of the Transfiguration section, but extended to Irma Pince's office. After seeing the women emerge from said office one too many times, not a hair out of place on either of them, Millicent had seen McGonagall shyly glance around the library to confirm there were no witnesses, and then McGonagall had clasped the librarian in her arms and kissed her deeply, and the librarian responded in kind. Then they'd cleared their throats, patted their buns, and walked away from each other with brisk steps, their heels clicking a little bit more cheerfully than before.
Millicent's heart was broken yet again, but much deeper than before. Irma had gently been grooming her, Millicent had felt. The cryptic librarian had offered Millicent books by Daphne du Maurier, Sheridan Le Fanu, and Colette, among others, and as soon as she began to turn their pages, Millicent knew that her heart had been seen by the tight-lipped librarian. For this sake, Millicent still forgave Ms. Pince the sin of suggesting Muggle literature, even though she cried for weeks after that moment of seeing Pince and McGonagall together.
The third crush actually had blossomed into something more, though it had been brief. During her fifth year, Millicent had been drinking firewhiskey and smoking secretly in the astronomy tower of a late autumn afternoon, when who should join her but the vivacious Gryffindor, Ginevra Weasley. The girl's face was stained with tears and Millicent, for lack of any better idea, offered the distraught Gryffindor a pull on her pipe. The girl had accepted, and this had led to an uncomfortable hour of the girl blathering at Millicent about her unrequited love for one arsehole, Harry Potter.
Millicent knew a little something about unrequited affection, and murmured consoling words about how crummy it was.
And Ginevra did something that no one else had ever done with Millicent. Ginevra had asked about her own experiences with love. Not who she fancied - but about her actual experiences.
She didn't know why she trusted the Gryffindor. But somehow, after an hour of listening to the Gryffindor cry, Millicent felt like she couldn't keep it in anymore. She found herself saying things about the librarian she'd never said before to anyone at all, much less a Gryffindor.
In retrospect, Ginevra was probably the worst choice to confide in about these kinds of feelings that were widely acknowledged to be perverse. Ginevra came from one of the most openly heterosexual families in the wizarding world. But it ended up being alright. She had offered Millicent her hand, and stroked Millicent's palm with her thumb.
And then somehow, the girls had ended up in bed together.
Their relationship, if they could call it that, had lasted only a month. The effort of finding quiet house-neutral places to fuck each other soon became too much of an obstacle for two people who didn't love each other. That, and Ginevra made it clear that this wasn't something that would be able to last - she had a mission to date as many boys as possible until she found the one that inspired Harry Potter to grow up and notice her. After one too many close calls, Ginevra had said she'd let Millicent know when they'd next meet up, and never got around to it. MIllicent didn't mind. Ginevra, for all her inventiveness and competence in the art of sex, seemed mostly keen on exploring for the sake of exploring. Also, she and Millicent had basically nothing in common, tacitly ignoring the fact that they were on opposite sides of the emerging war.
Despite all this, Millicent was vaguely jealous of Harry Potter of the future. Ginevra was truly a catch. That, and Millicent had felt invigorated by this brief liaison, no matter how inconsequential it might have been to the other girl. It made her feel like her lustful thoughts weren't just fantasies that were going to come crashing down when she finally got it on with another lady. Instead, she felt her passion overcome her with a driving need to get satisfaction, in whatever form she could.
She was happy to find some common ground in the heart and mind of one of her house-sisters, finally, at long last. Solome Zabini was another person who, like her, was fondest of the fairer sex, and she wore her long grey hair in a braid that went in big beautiful spirals on top of her head. She was petite, and thin, and her skin was dark.
They grew close in Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad. A seventh-year to Millicent's fifth-year, Salome was older than her years, and tended to be quite vivacious and outwardly interested in boys. It was only when Solome, a prefect, caught Millicent with one of her muggle books by Djuna Barnes, and then liltingly offered her a copy of Zami by Audre Lorde.
While it was a bit radical for her tastes, Millicent read it and returned it with a smile and a note, which she had smudged with a rare application of lipstick.
Salome was quick on the uptake, and invited Millicent to come and use the prefect's bathroom that evening. This was the beginning of Millicent's first real relationship.
To the outward world, they were merely friends. Salome was obsessed with fitness, and maintained a strict regimen that involved swordplay and dueling. She encouraged Millicent to join her. Millicent dropped a few stones' worth of weight and won it back as muscle. She was never thin, but now her bulk was a little bit more serviceable.
Solome kept on dating boys as was expected of her, and at the end of her seventh year, Salome had accepted an offer of marriage from a man twenty years older than her, Horton Magewell. Solome actually confessed to Millicent that she'd secured this betrothal last summer. However, her mother'd had seven husbands in twice as many years, and Horton was also concerned about their age difference. As a result, Horton insisted that Solome date at least seven boys during her seventh year, so that he might be assured that Solomon's heart was truly his, and she wasn't going to renege on her vows.
Throughout this, the girls continued seeing one another, taking advantage of the peace and quiet that came to Salome's life now that she no longer had to fret over the foolish boys in her own year. Millicent admired Salome's cunning, and Salome admired Millicent's ambitions to rise above marrying a man.
They spent a flirtatious, overwhelmingly joyful summer together, preparing for Salome's wedding. Granted, Salome had dropped hints that when the day of the wedding came, they'd have to end things. Millicent naively assumed that this wasn't going to happen. They loved each other, she knew, and they'd find a way to stay together.
Then, on the day of, Salome gave Millicent a letter, smudged with her perfect pink wedding lipstick, and Millicent wept reading it in the lav while Salome said her vows with Horton, to an audience of hundreds.
Millicent cut her hair short and returned to Hogwarts for her sixth year, broken hearted and rotten on the inside and determined to never fall in love again. Ever.
Then, she made the mistake of giving Hermione Granger more than a passing glance. And she realized she was done for.
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